Collective

A note present in my life these days. The contradiction of raw life and ideals. A world in which we want to keep the collective benefit at the back of our minds at all times, but are caught in an endless race to survive.

The question is always, should I sacrifice myself for the collective? Am I an individual, or an extension of all my intersecting ideas? We tend to say it’s the privileged; the unawake; who are locked in their everyday, in their rap sheet. But there is a consciousness we all have that we cannot rationalize. We cannot wallow, we merely must feel. Let the unfairness wash over us. Sit with the feeling every day. A gaping mouth we mustn’t feed, merely watch with agonizing shock.

D’Angelo’s Really Love I think perfectly encapsulates this contradictory feeling. We’ve uplifted this very Western idea of romantic love being the most important thing in our worlds, as the something that seals the cracks between disparate shards of life. We pursue with the utmost earnestness, aiming to pin the real love tail to whatever it is we can find. This very human concept, an eternal cycle. We cannot escape, merely lean into the humanness of I’m in Really Love, for Real this Time.

Real Love surrounds us, in our every trip to the grocery, every stranger who passes us by, every micro thought and twitch we experience. The very experience of existing is real love.

This morning I played tennis at the park. Trees blanketed the sky, a crane off in the distance performed some construction. A baby in the basketball court next to us. Chasing the ball, bad serves. The ambient playlist my friend blasted from his Bose portable speaker. Seeing if we could volley to 25. Every breath I took I felt.

I remembered a past love. All flaws aside, what I loved about them was this very breath. This comfortable silence. Perhaps it masked a sort of insecurity, I don’t know. But I always felt this calmness. This grounded presence. I was a firefly in a jar flitting about on limited reserves of light while they watched.

I want to soar like that tennis ball into the sky, out. Give me your hand. That’s being in really love.